Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 821 posts

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#81

Post by pantalaimon »

Avamander wrote: post #26
aniforprez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

Most banks will charge you extra for the instant payment. It's pretty ridiculous.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#82

Post by kazen44 »

zbolian wrote: post #71
aphextron wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. They exist entirely at the behest of their respective nation states' laws and regulations, and are completely subordinate to all official law enforcement and military forces. It's a flawed analogy. This would be tantamount to a private military company asserting their right to conduct foreign wars in the name of a…

The monetary policy of the currencies underlying libra are also fully determined at the behest of their respective nation states (or centralized monetary authority in the case of the EU). So, actually not that flawed. Governments and central banks are foolish to not get behind something like this because the alternative is something they can't influence at all like Bitcoin which maintains no peg to anything they do.

i don't think the goverments are foolish in this regards.

What are the advantages of libra compared to a normal bank transfer inside the bank union? Almost all positive aspects of libra already exists in the eurozone thanks to SEPA.

From an american perspective libra seems like an improvement, but the US is decades behind compared to the rest of the world when it comes to banking.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#83

Post by WanderPanda »

aazaa wrote: post #49
pjc50 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has zero interest in devaluation; in fact they've been accused of being far too strict in Euro monetary policy, with the 0-2% inflation target.

Germany has profited immensely from the use of the euro in foreign trade. Had it kept the Deutschmark, German exports would be by some esteems 25% more expensive than they are now, given the strong fiscal position of the country. Germany is in a unique position of being able to jawbone about devaluation and monetary policy while reaping the rewards of spendthrift member states.

When you replace "Germany" with the german state or its tax revenue I would agree. Having a low value / devaluing currency goes to the disadvantage of people getting their salary in that currency.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#84

Post by raverbashing »

aazaa wrote: post #41
speps wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your German example is a bit silly to use here given that its exchange rate is 1:1 with euros. There are other regional currencies in other countries, they don't usually operate independently from the country's own currency though.

How so? The Libra proposal kept its value constant with respect to a basket of currencies.

You can only keep the value of something "constant" (or pegged to something) if it's not non-freely negotiable and you can tightly control it.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#85

Post by reaperducer »

ethbro wrote: post #69
moksly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has turned out to be a potential threat to free society. I’m not just talking about the mass manipulation that goes on mostly unregulated, but also the fact that it has quite a lot of personal information on our citizens. Maybe that wouldn’t be an issue if Europe was the best of friends with America, but as that’s obviously not the case. I don’t think our relationship will fully deteriorate, but we can’t ign…

All problems from big tech stem from their centralization. If Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook were broken up into collections of smaller, independent companies... a lot of the ills would simply disappear, and the market as a whole would be a lot healthier.

I'd like to think this would be so, too. But I don't.

I suspect if they were a bunch of smaller companies, they would all just sell or trade the information with each other.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#86

Post by kawera »

Avamander wrote: post #26
aniforprez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

TED in Brazil - instantaneous transfers between bank accounts, managed by the central bank. Cost from zero to 2-3 dollars per transaction.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#87

Post by WanderPanda »

bitL wrote: post #80
aazaa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has profited immensely from the use of the euro in foreign trade. Had it kept the Deutschmark, German exports would be by some esteems 25% more expensive than they are now, given the strong fiscal position of the country. Germany is in a unique position of being able to jawbone about devaluation and monetary policy while reaping the rewards of spendthrift member states.

Germany's upper class benefited both from Euro and keeping salaries of their employees low.

that!

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#88

Post by freddie_mercury »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #40
freddie_mercury wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think this is so hard? You pass a law. Most people don't break the law. You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines. Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean nobody can commit murder .

Murder is also immoral. Libra is hardly morally questionable. If you want a better comparison take (software) piracy. Piracy is illegal and while I'm sure Steam, Spotify, and Netflix has reduced it a lot it is still thriving and many people break the law if not daily at least monthly. Best thing you can do is to make a law that forces banks to prevent payments to known Libra sellers, but again if there is value in Li…

The US outlawed gold at one point. Holding gold is clearly not immoral. Yet almost everyone handed their gold over to the government.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#89

Post by logicchains »

grezql wrote: post #3

I wish they just blocked facebook altogether. It has caused people more pain than good

Citation needed? Most people I know happily use it to communicate and post funny (or at least trying to be funny) posts, or are older people who post lots of family pictures. The views of people on Hackernews don't seem very representative of those of the general population, maybe because hating on Facebook is an excellent excuse for people to feel superior to the general population. "I know better than those ignorant proles, I wish they'd do what I think is best for them instead of what they want to do."
Post reply on HN